32 interesting facts about Céline Dion! (List)

2. She is named after the song “Céline,” which was released by French singer Hugues Aufray two years before she was born, Dion clearly had no choice but to become a singer herself.

3. Celine Dion was born on March 30, 1968, in Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada.

4. At the age of 12, Celine Dion recorded a demo tape of a song she had written with her mother.

5. She started a restaurant chain in Québec called “Nickels” (1990), later on introduced in Ontario.

6. She comes from a large family – she is the youngest of 14 children.

7. She recorded her first English language album, Unison, in 1990.

8. Her mother, Thérèse Tanguay Dion (better known as “maman Dion” in Québec), is famous for her culinary talents.

9. Her parents formed a singing group, Dion’s Family, and they toured Canada when Celine was still an infant.

10. Dion’s real breakthrough into pop music stardom came in 1992, when she recorded the theme to Disney’s hit animated feature Beauty and the Beast.

11. At age 16, Céline sang “Une colombe” (a well known French song) for Pope John Paul II at the Montreal Olympic Stadium in front of 65,000 people.

12. Her family owned a piano bar called Le Vieux Baril, where Dion and her siblings would regularly perform.

13. Celine Dion had recorded nine French albums and won numerous awards by the time she was 18.

14. The first record album Céline ever bought was Stevie Wonder’s “Talking Book” (1972).

15. In 1993, Dion announced her feelings for her manager by declaring him “the colour of [her] love” in the dedication section of her third English-language album The Colour of My Love. However, instead of criticizing their relationship as Dion had feared, fans embraced the couple.

16. After hearing the tape and inviting Dion to perform for him in person, Angelil signed her immediately under the condition that he would have complete control over her career.

17. In 1988, she won the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin, Ireland, and her performance was broadcast live in countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australia and Japan.

18. Eventually, Angélil and Dion married in an extravagant wedding ceremony in December 1994, which was broadcast live on Canadian television.

19. Rene Angelil mortgaged his own home to finance her debut album, La Voix du bon Dieu (The Voice of God).

20. She is three months younger than her stepson, Patrick Angélil.

21. She sings frequently in English and in French, but she has also sang in Spanish, German and Japanese.

22. My Heart Will Go On,” the love theme for the 1997 blockbuster film “Titanic,” is Dion’s most popular song.

23. In the first months of 2000, Dion announced that she was taking time off from her career in order to focus on her family. She and Angelil had been trying to have children for years, and eventually decided to use in vitro fertilization to conceive. In May 2000, Dion underwent two small operations at a fertility clinic in New York in order to improve her chances of becoming pregnant.

27. In 2004, Dion got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A year earlier, she received a star on the lesser-known Canadian Walk of Fame.

28. Dion loves singing other people’s songs. Some of Dion’s most famous covers include Cyndi Lauper’s “I Drove All Night,”Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself” and John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy.”

29. She has done numerous duets with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Luciano Pavarotti and Aretha Franklin to name a few.

30. She gave birth to her first child at age 32, son Rene-Charles Angelil, on January 25, 2001. She named her fraternal twin sons “Nelson” and “Eddy”, in honor of Nelson Mandela and Eddy Marnay, respectively. They were born on October 23, 2010.